Category: Cult of measurement

The dust has had some time to settle now on last week's Nadellagate, and it's left me thinking that the tech industry, and IT in particular, has a deeper issue of lack of a diversity of thought of which gender bias is just a symptom. I'm not one who particularly believes in diversity for diversity's … Continue reading Limited memepools

Share this:

Like this:

Yesterday I found myself in a couple of conversations that revolved around what has been a bit of a recurring theme for me - the dangerous downside of measuring things. The first was around the gender inequality evident in the IT industry. My own view is that this is a symptom of a more pervasive … Continue reading Don’t count on it

Share this:

Like this:

I'm very lucky to live in the stereotypical leafy South West London suburb of Teddington. Close to the open spaces of Richmond and Bushy Parks, with a thriving local independent shopping centre, great schools and other amenities. The best way to illustrate what sort of a place Teddington is is when I saw dog poo … Continue reading Leading questions

Like this:

"#HR needs to stop reporting and start predicting" - Michael Carty, twitter.com/mjcarty The quote above from Michael on Twitter this morning (you can see the full thing here https://twitter.com/MJCarty/status/493812100138287104) got me thinking. It mostly got me thinking about how I seem to be developing a particular breed of Big Data iconoclasm these days. The reason Michael's … Continue reading Big data: The tyranny of the past

Share this:

Like this:

Last week I had the pleasure of spending some time with IT Directors and CIOs from a broad spectrum of UK organisations on board Aurora for the Spring 2014 IT Directors' Forum. It's the second of these events that I've attended, and it was noticeable this time around that in comparison to two years … Continue reading Relative value

Share this:

Like this:

There is a piece that Adrian Bridgewater has published on Computer Weekly about collaboration tools that's got me seriously concerned about the ability for enterprise software to do anything outside of the realm of Taylorist scientific management. Adrian's article looks at trends in the collaboration space that seem to be moving from focusing on humans … Continue reading Reverting to process

Like this:

The world of customer engagement is a funny, almost bi-polar place. On the one hand it should be totally people-centric, as it's the place where companies converse with their customers. Except it's in many cases completely industrial - a world of de-skilled white collar work where the production line, six-sigma approaches of manufacturing have been deployed … Continue reading Customer engagement bypass

Share this:

Like this:

There are times when I reckon I just don't get it. The world out there is different to the way I think, and I've got some sort of gap in my cognitive abilities. Last night's news about the WhatsApp purchase by Facebook (for anything up to a report $19Bn) was one of the those times, … Continue reading Bloody hockey sticks

Share this:

Like this:

My wife recently entered the world of the quantified self and wearable computing when she got a FitBit activity tracker. It's really interesting to see how quickly the device, the app, and the "10,000 steps a day" target has changed her behaviour. We are walking to places where before we would have driven. I'm … Continue reading The only person you’re cheating is yourself